A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [85]
It was depressing to think about.
There was always a new weapon, something to kill greater numbers of the enemy than the enemy could hope to kill on one’s own side. Parkinson must have been more than a pair of hands in the work he was doing on poisonous gases. Men like Deloran wouldn’t have wasted an hour’s thought on the whereabouts of a minor chemist who carried out tests and wrote reports. The housekeeper had said that Parkinson was pleased with something new that would help end the war sooner. Had he left with that work unfinished or at a critical stage?
If that had been the case, someone would have moved heaven and earth to get Parkinson back into the laboratory as quickly as possible.
Had he discovered a conscience when his wife died and decided that he was finished with what had always been his life’s work? Had he been frightened by the man he’d become, and walked away?
Rutledge brought to mind the face in the sketch, and tried to probe behind it.
All he could find was an ordinary man, despite what he had done in his laboratories, nothing in his features to mark him, nothing that could have caught one’s eye on the streets of London or Canterbury, nothing that would reflect what this person had chosen to do with his life. Neither evil nor good, just a man with no calluses on his hands and no scars, no means of telling him from a half-dozen others his size and weight and coloring.
Then what had happened to him if he was so ordinary?
Rutledge turned back toward the inn and asked Mrs. Smith if he could have his dinner brought to his room. After eating it by the window, he went on sitting there in the darkness even after the yard was silent and the road in front was empty.
Trying to picture Jean’s face, the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand, he found it was difficult. He had loved her, or believed he had, and grieved for what might have been when the engagement ended.
Now, with her death, a door had closed. She was the last link with the bright summer of 1914, and happiness, and a world that was going to be his to grasp.
After a while he got up and readied himself for bed without lighting the lamp.
He had expected to lie there awake, listening to Hamish in his head. In the morning, he would go to the cottages and find out who might have wanted the death of one Gerald Parkinson, or if they had wanted to kill Gaylord Partridge.
Instead he’d drifted into sleep without dreams.
Best-laid plans have a way of going astray.
Someone was knocking on his door before the first light of dawn had penetrated his room, summoning him urgently.
He fought his way back from a deep sleep and answered.
Smith said, his voice husky, “There’s been trouble at the Tomlin Cottages. You’d best come.”
16
Rutledge dressed swiftly, asking questions as he worked. But Smith knew nothing more.
In the lobby he found Slater standing there, pale and agitated.
“What kind of trouble?” he asked the smith.
“I don’t know. I heard a cry. And after that, nothing.”
“From the Partridge cottage?”
“There? No. Please hurry!”
Rutledge went at once into the yard and Slater followed, going to the bonnet and bending to turn the crank with his massive hand.
Smith was calling after them, “Shall I come as well?”
“Not yet. You may be needed later.”
He got behind the wheel, and Slater slid into the other seat, a hulking shadow in the light of the innkeeper’s lamp.
“Which cottage?” Rutledge asked.
“Mr. Willingham’s. Number Three, just above Mr. Partridge.”
The old man, then.
They drove the short distance to the cottages in silence, but Rutledge could feel the anxiety in the man at his side, and reaction setting in.
“I didn’t investigate,” Slater said as the cottages came into view. “I’ve never heard anything like that. I fear there’s murder done, Mr. Rutledge. Sure as God’s above.”
“Can you be certain he wasn’t calling for help? Taken ill suddenly in the night—a fall?”
But he knew it must be more than that, to frighten Slater so badly. Slater walked the night and was of a size that brooked no interference.